


Buried Low Beneath Your Guilt

by protagonistically (the_protagonist)



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Lazarus Pit, canon violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:39:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_protagonist/pseuds/protagonistically
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU that examines what would happen if Jason had come back to Bruce to be his Robin again.  </p><p>I’m playing fast and loose with the nebulous preboot timeline, here.  Placed somewhere after Stephanie's 'death' and Jack's murder and Jason's return to Gotham.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. chapter one

Tim knows that he's faster than this.  He’s _faster_ then this.  
  
It's just that he doesn’t hear the movement until it’s too late.  Until there’s nothing he can do but be carried by the momentum of the force behind his back, on his aching muscles.  Whatever is it, whoever it is that has made it into the Bat Cave - with capital letters - is larger than him, heavier than him.    
  
 _Better_ then him, because his arms get pinned with knees and the blood is cut right off from his fingers and they start to tingle and ache and burn.  And Tim’s legs try to kick out because he knows this counterattack -- a move that _Shiva_ taught him, but it’s no use because this bulk, this weight is better than him and heavier and more desperate.  He has no momentum on his side.  Hasn’t had any since Steph died, since his dad was murdered and he really still isn’t sleeping through his so short - blink your eyes and it’s over - nights.  
  
So this mass of muscle, pale skin, and crushing  _bruising_ fingers and Tim can make out a flash of dark black hair out of the corner of his eyes but that’s all he can do because the hand, the strong fingers have their tight grip on the hair that’s gotten too long at the base of his neck and yanks.  Hard.  
  
Tim’s neck snaps back and he feels a vertebrae crack.  The sound of hollow fluid floods his ears.  
  
“ _Replacement_.”  The hand tightens, pulls Tim taught like the draw of a bow and everything burns and Tim can’t even take a breath, can’t even swallow down the saliva that hangs in his throat, choking him.  
  
All he do is gurgle helplessly.  
  
“You _replaced_ me!”  
  
And Tim knows that voice.  He knows it with everything in his self, his body, his soul.  Every part of him that’s Robin tell him so.  Screams at him that it’s Jason. _Jason Todd_.  

Robin.  

Robin.  

Robin.  
  
But he’s Robin?  It’s all he has.  Is this identity that he took, that he claimed as his own and molded to suit him as he needed it too.  For himself.  For Bruce.  For a man that doesn't meet his eyes half the time.  
  
And Jason is dead.  
  
But Jason.  It’s his voice.  And his brutality and anger anchoring him down to the sea that is the damp cave floor.    
But Tim feels like he’s been drowning for a few months now.  What would it be like to sink?  But how can he?  It’s Jason Todd on his back, hand at his neck and how is this even possible-  
  
Then pushes his face to the ground and his nose break on contact with the hard ground.  
  
Warm blood pours out of his nose and Tim hears himself take shallow, wet sips of air before his vision which had just gone from white to red starts to materialize before him.  
  
Because Jason releases his arms and legs from the pin and flips him over so he stares into Jason’s teal eyes.  Red rimmed and dilated, but they were Jason’s eyes.  The ones he watched through lenses and the ones he saw bloom in trays of developer and fixer and the smell of chemicals races back to Tim before he even knows it.  It covers up the copper tang of his own blood that hangs in the air.    
  
“You took Robin from me!  You took everything from me!”    
  
Jason’s mouth had been moving before but these words are the ones that catch up to him now.  
  
Jason has a grip on Tim by his shirt now.  His neck and the collar of his t-shirt.  It stretches under the iron grip of the once-dead boy.  
  
He’s shaking Tim.  Shaking him so that his necks flops back and forth.  
  
“God.  Please.  Give it back to me.  I need it.  I _need_ it and it was mine and you took it!”  Jason is crazed.  He sounds desperate and angry and scared and Tim can see himself in the black pupils of the boy’s eyes.  “Give it to me!”  
  
Tim doesn’t know what to say.  His nose is gushing blood still.  Flowing down his face.  And Jason shakes Tim again.  And again until he’s cracking the back of Tim’s skull to the ground with each shake.  
  
All Tim sees are stars.  Because he’s choking.  The blood is pooling in the back of his mouth and he swallows as the world around him curtains off.  Darkens like when his mom would pull the drapes shut when she was home from one her trips and she just needed to sleep for a week before she had the energy to do it again - the trips.  
  
Tim sees her golden hair as he slowly starts to drown on his own blood.


	2. chapter two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An AU that examines what would happen if Jason had come back to Bruce to be his Robin again.
> 
> I’m playing fast and loose with the nebulous preboot timeline, here. Placed somewhere after Stephanie's 'death' and Jack's murder and Jason's return to Gotham.

Consciousness comes back like a slow, dull burn.  Like the burning of paper.  First he hears footsteps and then he hears voices.  And he knows that he’s still in the cave because he’s been breathing the same filtered air for a few years now and he just… his body just knows it now.  Tim's lungs know how to breath it in better.  
  
It’s just something he knows.  It's familiar, like a warm arms around his ribs.  
  
These things happen in a bullet-ed list with even margins and then, afterwards, he opens his eyes.  
  
Tim can feel the swelling of his nose and the inside corners of his eyes.  There is the unmistakable tug of skin from dried blood, tears, and salts.  His head hurts and he feels nauseous, but not enough to close his eyes again.  Not enough to lay back down on the - he has to check, because he’s not sure - the medical cot in the cave.    
  
He isn’t anchored down anymore; isn’t lost at sea.  
  
Tim is just as lost as he usually is.  An explorer without a home.  
  
When he can opens his eyes and the heat from the medical lights hit his corneas, cause them to burn and and then fog and then clear and he sees Alfred.  
  
Alfred with his kind, patient eyes.  Eyes that haven’t been able to look anything but sorry, pitying since his father bled out on his old kitchen floor.  
  
“Master Tim, you have a concussion.”  Is what Tim hears from the man.  It's vaguely echoe-y.  Dissonance not caused by the cave itself, but the caverns in his head.  
  
Alfred turns around to check the heart monitor he’s hooked up to.  He moves his hands, tries to push himself up under his arms that feel like jello, but he feels the sharp tug of a needle in the flat of his wrist.    
  
“You’re also are dehydrated, young man.  Please do refrain from moving.”    
  
Tim blinks.  Looks around.  He feels like… like a piece of cheap Swedish furniture - missing screws, missing pieces.  Barely held together - like he shouldn’t last for too long, just a few years.  His brain… his thoughts.  They -  
  
What happened?  
  
He had just gotten to the cave - Tim had skipped class, just walked out of calculus.  It was still strange - to sit in those rooms of his school.  Like his dad hadn’t died.  Like Stephanie could still be just a few rooms away in Western Civ.  In school he was supposed to pretend that his world wasn’t in pieces.    
  
And he was having trouble doing just that.    
  
So Tim had just left and then he went for a walk.  And then he had ended up at Wayne Manor.  Because he was running out of places to run.    
  
The cave was where he could be Robin.  he didn’t have to be Tim Drake and if he was Robin then he didn’t have to think about things like dads and girlfriends and mothers.  He just had to think about Batman and the mission and that was it.    
  
But he’d been attacked?  
  
And then he remembers teal blue eyes.  And black hair.  Solid muscle.  
  
“Jason!”  Tim gasps and pushes himself up on the cot.  “I saw Jason!”  
  
Alfred doesn’t say anything, just places a hand on Tim’s shoulder and squeezes quickly before walking away.  
  
And Jason is there a second later, after Alfred disappears behind a partition.  
  
“I need Robin,”  Jason tells him before anything else, appearing out of nowhere.  “I _need_ Robin.  I need Batman and Bruce and I _need_ them.”  Jason is panicked and he’s squeezing his fists; knuckles white and strong and Tim’s hackles rise, his fight or flight response kicking in.  
  
Tim positions himself so that he’ll be able to slide off of the bed.  The needle in his arm will hurt when it tugs out, but he’ll be able to move quick.  
  
“I’m not-” Jason grabs Tim’s arm in one of his large hands and they are calloused and scabbed in an alarming way, “Please.  It’s all I have.”  
  
Tim stares at Jason, feels his eyes widen.  It’s getting hard to breathe.  It feels like there is a weight sitting on his chest.  
  
It’s all he has too.  
  
Where is _Bruce?_  
  
Tim forces himself to break eye contact with the pale boy in front of him.  His eyes skirt the perimeter of the room and he sees the man.  Bruce up and over by the computer and he’s watching them.  His eyes are glued to Jason.  
  
He’s not even looking at Tim.  
  
Goosebumps cover his arms, legs and neck and shivers shake through his frame.  Because.  Because he gets it.  
  
Jason was right: he was just a fill in.  A replacement.  
  
Bruce didn’t even choose him.  He practically _made_ Bruce train him.    
  
And now Jason, the one Bruce did choose, the one Bruce actually wanted is back.  And Tim isn’t needed anymore.  Tim isn't his son, he's nothing to the man.  A former neighbor, a piece on a chessboard.  A pawn to use in a battle.  
  
Bruce can’t even meet Tim’s eyes.  
  
Oh.  
  
“Please.”  Jason repeats.  Shaking Tim’s arm, bruising the skin beneath his fingertips.  
  
“Okay.”  Tim manages to choke out.  “Okay.”  
  
Jason slumps with the word.  He removes his hand from Tim’s body and runs a hand through his hair.  Pulls at the streak of white near his forehead.  “Okay.”  Is all he says.  And he turns around and walks towards where Bruce is standing.  
  
Tim… he’s going to start… doing something that’s unseemly in a few minutes.  He feels his eyes burn.  Feels the weight on his chest shift before he realizes that he's put a hand on his chest, by his throat and he pressing there, he can feel his heart beat under his palms.    
  
It’s easy enough to pull out the IV drip, to unhook the heart monitor.    
  
His neck is bruised.  His arm is aching and he still has dried blood down the front of his shirt.  But none of that stops hims from quickly tugging on his shoes, his jacket, and racing out of the cave as fast as his spinning world, loose in equilibrium, will allow him too.  
  
He hears his name being called as he rushes up the stairs, out through Bruce’s office.  He doesn’t watch where he’s going and bangs into a picture hanging in the foyer.  The frame hits the ground with a loud bang and the glass shatters.    
  
Alfred is looking at him with obvious concern, ignoring the mess that litters the hallway.  Ignoring the damage to one of Bruce’s many ancestors portraits.  
  
“I’m sorry,” is the only thing Tim can push out before he turns and sprints out of the house.  Past the manicured lawn, past the iron gate.  
  
He runs.  
  
Tim runs until he gets to the bus station and then he waits.  Because the bus to Bludhaven won’t get here for another sixty four minutes.


	3. chapter three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An AU that examines what would happen if Jason had come back to Bruce to be his Robin again.
> 
> I’m playing fast and loose with the nebulous preboot timeline, here. Placed somewhere after Stephanie's 'death' and Jack's murder and Jason's return to Gotham.

It’s dark by the time the bus arrives, fifteen minutes late, and it’s 6:45 in the evening.  The passengers pile in.  There aren’t many at this stop, but the route will pick up more.  And it does.  It’s a forty minute ride to Bludhaven.  It’s only about twenty miles outside of Gotham, but there’s the ever present Gotham traffic.  The steady ebb and flow of it.  
  
The banality of the commute.  The way the lights from the traffic blink and flash.  The start and stop of the city bus’ engine. It’s always easy to lose focus on the bus or the train.  It’s easy to get sucked into the lives of those around you.  Like the lady two rows in front of Tim, who can’t be older than twenty-five and carries a backpack stuffed fully to the seams, looks heavy with text books, a canvas tote bag, filled with meager food to make a dinner or two.  Just a box of pasta, a box of cereal and a quart of milk.  He makes out a bag of carrots and a six pack of juice boxes.  
  
Which might explain the tiny, much lighter Superman backpack that rests in the seat next to her.  
  
Tim hasn’t seen her face, doesn’t know what she looks like, but he imagines that her eyes are big and brown, but they look exhausted.  But she’s not unhappy, just worked to the bone.  
  
Tim bets that her sink is full of dishes.  To the brim because she took the apartment with the yard over the one with the dishwasher and dishes are silly things to worry about when she could be playing with her baby.  
  
She studies at night.  Studies hard to make it better for her family, even if it’s just the two of them.  
  
He watches the black teenager at the front of the bus, he’s in nice, name brand street clothes.  He looks about Tim’s age, maybe older.  The black Jansport back-pack at the kid’s feet is heavy with books, just like the woman’s was.  
  
Tim wonders if they were in the same night class.  
  
The man and the woman don’t make eye contact, but the boy is talking animatedly with the bus driver.  He laughs and slaps his knee when the driver says something.  His teeth are perfect straight and flash white next to his dark skin.  
  
He’s very put together.  Even the headphones around his neck look perfect, just so.  He looks young and mostly carefree.  He looks like he *knows* he’s smart, so he can be a little cocky about it.  
  
He probably gets really good grades with medium effort.  
  
Tim’s glad.  He likes it when people look like they are enjoying themselves.  Not everything should be _work_ for everybody.   
  
Tim watches these people.  Watches them and wonders and constructs stories and lives for them.  He’s an architect and he can give them fullness of being in his mind.  It’s wonderful, lovely distraction from his own emptiness.  
  
From the hole that’s bleeding, gaping from his chest.  
  
He uses his hand to hold in his heart. Or so he imagines.  
  
He hugs his jacket closed around him, holds in his split skin.  Holds it together.  
  
The bus drops him off half a mile from Saint Jo’s.  It’s a warm night and his shirt is still covered in blood so he can’t take his jacket off.  By the time he reaches the hospital, he’s worked up a light sweat.  
  
He doesn’t really know why his first instinct was to run to Saint Jo’s.  Run to her.  
  
But — the missing piece inside of him.  The hole that is gaping and pulsing and empty and hollow — it needs something.  If he thinks about what he doesn’t have with to much focus, to much need, he’s honestly not sure what he’ll do.  
  
So instead of focusing on his fault lines, the crater in his chest, he needs something to ground him.  Something that will work better than weights on his lungs, better than gravity on his shoulders.  
  
Tim needs to see Dana - someone who truly has hit one of the bottoms, has nothing to fall through again and he needs to compare her pain with his.  Because Dana can’t remember to feed herself.  Dana doesn’t remember to get dressed in the morning.    
  
Dana doesn’t know how to exist — to be a person anymore.  Not with what she’s been through.  
  
So if Tim can just see her and help her and take care of her.  He’ll recognize the defects in himself before they shatter.  Before the pressure gets so bad that he can’t remember when he last ate, or what he needed to turn in for calculus.  Or.  
  
Tim shakes his head, tries to clear whatever had floated into his brain, into his vision.  
  
No.  He needs to see Dana - it’s what he should have been doing anyway.  Taking care of her because she couldn’t do it.  Wasn’t able to.  She loved his dad.  Loved him and she wasn’t able to move on.  Because when your parent or loved one or husband is murdered you aren’t supposed to just head back to the grind.    
  
Maybe he was being punished.  
  
No.  Jason coming back - Jason being back is a miracle and if Tim is going to be punished Jason wouldn’t be back.  He tells himself that that type of thinking is cowardly and selfish.  
  
Maybe he’s being absolved, is his last thought before he walks through the doors and into the near deserted hospital.    
  
The lights are bright of course, halogen lights that are just a little too blue.  But there is a comforting antiseptic smell to the air.  It’s clean and it burns a little as Tim breathes it in.  Nurses that wear blue, pink and pastel colored scrubs and tired eyes mill about.  They walk with a sense of purpose that Tim finds admirable.  It’s a little like watching Batman.  Or Robin.  Or anyone else that knew they were responsible for people’s lives.    
  
That they make a difference.  
  
“Honey? Are you okay?”   
  
A calm voice knocked him from his thoughts.  He was at the nurses reception desk and.  The nurse was staring at him with concern.    
  
“The emergency room is in the next building and… do you know who did this to you?”  
  
He brought a hand up to his swollen eyes and nose, “No.  No I’m fine.  I just.  I’m here to see Dana Winters-Drake”  
  
“Visiting hours were over an hour ago - and Ms. Winters has no immediate family in the area…” The nurse trails off.  
  
Because he remembers now, that Dana never formally adopted him.  They had talked about it once, briefly.  Dana has said she didn’t want to replace his mother and that she’d be okay with either decision and Tim had dodged the issue and then, later on that evening, probably went on patrol, or left to go visit the Titans that weekend.  
  
Tim’s stomach seizes. “She’s my—” He stutters, thinks, starts again, “I’m her—”  
  
What?  She’s just Dana.    
  
Tim is careless.  These are the things that happen when you are careless.  A voice tells him this and it sounds an awful lot like Batman.  
  
“Please.  She’s all I have.  Please.  Please.”  Give this to me, he echoes the words Jason pleaded to him that evening.  
  
 _She’s all I have._  
  
“Sweetie, I’m really sorry, but… you can’t see her tonight.”  Her eyes are furrowed and her mouth is turned down.  She’s sorry.  “I’m so sorry,” she repeats, “Come back tomorrow, okay?  Come back tomorrow and we’ll see if we can’t straighten this out.”  
  
Tim blinks.  His eyes race around the room, the lights are still too blue, the nurses are still overworked and underpaid.  He’s not Robin any more.  His dad is dead.  Stephanie is gone.  And now, in the middle of the hospital, he realizes that he’s alone now.    
  
Probably for good.  
  
He swallows hard, he wants to scream.  But he doesn’t.  Instead, Tim closes his eyes and then stares at his feet.  He ignores the headache that’s pulsing in his congested sinuses.  “What time-” he tries to choke out, but he can’t; he sounds just wrecked.  “What time are visiting hours?”  
  
“For psych patients like your Ms. Winters, it’s 11am.”  
  
Right now, It’s a little after 8pm.  And he has nothing else to do.  “Thank you for your help.”    
  
He turns towards the waiting area.  The gift shop is closed.  The receptionist is reading a novel with Fabio and a well endowed woman on the front cover.  
  
There are a few people in the room, other people waiting for news about their loved ones, but it’s easy enough to find an empty part of the room and fold himself in to one of the chairs.  
  
Tim has nothing else to do; no where else to go.  
  
So he’ll just wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are nice. :)


	4. chapter four

It’s astonishing to Dick that doing paperwork, writing and filing and fact-checking police reports while sitting at a desk can be this exhausting.    
  
Dick has been sitting at a desk for eight hours.  His muscles ache and his knee, the one he should be _rehabbing_ this very moment, is tight, tense, and sore.  And because of all these things, he thinks, is why he’s flopped on the couch, injured leg dangling off to the side and face squashed in a pillow.  
  
 _Get up_ , Dick, he yells at himself.    
  
 _But why?_  His counterpart argues. 

His counterpart makes a great point.  
  
After a few more minutes of nothing, just awkward breathing into the cushion, he’s just about ready to roll up, limp to the pantry to grab the box of Cheerios, when his phone beeps irritatingly from where he dumped it on the coffee table.  
  
He rolls his face around towards air, towards the coffee table and reaches to grab the offending device.  
  
“Officer Grayson, can I-”  
  
“Dick.”   
  
It’s Bruce.  It’s that _voice_.  And Dick knows that voice better than anything in the world.  Something is wrong and Bruce has that voice.  “Bruce?  What happened?”  If he just gets it out of the way now… Dick is worried.  He’s worried and thinking about every horrible thing that could ever happen and Bruce… he has the audacity to _pause_!  
  
Dick can hear the nothing-breathing that Bruce does so well on the other line.  Through the wires and the airwaves and he can almost see the tense of the man’s giant shoulders, the angle of his neck.  
  
“Bruce, what’s _wrong_ ,” he pleads.  
  
“Dick, something did happen and… when I tell you you are going to want to run over here as fast as you can but -”  
  
“There aren’t any ‘buts’, Bruce, now tell me what the hell happened!”  Dick is panicking now and he—  
  
“Nothing.  It’s not.  It’s not a _bad_ thing.”  
  
Dick is frozen in his relief.  Feels it melt over himself in a slow instant.  “You promise?”  
  
“I promise.”  Bruce sighs and Dick can hear Bruce turn his head, can hear his mouth turn a few degrees from the speaker on the phone.  “Dick… I want to tell you, but you’d just… you’d just run over here and right now,”  Bruce pauses and Dick’s spine starts to tingle again, “Right now I think Tim might need you.”  
  
 _What_ _?  Why would Tim need him?_  “What did you do to Tim?”  
  
“Nothing.  Nothing, but… I’ll explain everything once you find Tim.  He’s… he went out earlier this evening and he.  He doesn’t have a tracer and he forgot his phone.”  
  
“And you can’t go find him because… something that’s not-bad is happening over there, even though Tim isn’t there and actively left the ‘not-bad’ thing and he now might be… upset enough to warrant *your* concern.”  Dick levels to the man over the phone.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Bruce-”  
  
“I’ll tell you everything after you’ve found Tim.  He’s not in Kansas; Superboy, Cassie and Bart haven’t heard from him.  My first instinct tells me he’s running to you, but, if you think about how Tim operates, he probably will assume that you are already over at the Manor or on your way-”  Bruce sounds half-way distracted and his voice gets fuzzy every few words, as if he’s watching someone on the other end.  
  
“Because of the _not-bad thing_?”  Dick emphasizes with a question.  
  
“-On your way here.  My next guess would be to the facility his former step-mother is being cared for at.”  
  
His poor little brother.  His poor Tim.  “What has him so spooked, Bruce?”   _What did you do to my little brother?_  
  
“Just go find Tim.  Get him to come back.  And then you and I… well.  Just find Tim, Dick.”  
  
Loud and clear, boss, “Okay, Bruce.  I’ll be in touch.”  
  
“Thank you.” Dick can hear the relief in Bruce's tone, but he hangs up before Dick can say anything else.  
  
—-  
  
Dick waits around for twenty minutes - waits for Tim to come to him.  It's hard to sit and do nothing.  The twenty minutes feels more like a month.  
  
And Tim doesn't show up, doesn't call and that makes Dick sad.  And worried.    
  
It’s not unusual for Tim to be solemn, to be a lone wolf and be his own company, but it still prods Dick’s sore spots just the same.  
  
It’s another twenty minutes to the hospital.  Dick hits every red light from his apartment to the facility in typical city fashion.  
  
Dick tries not to think about Bruce and the manor and most definitely doesn’t palm his phone in an anxious manner, with the itch to call back the man and demand answers.  
  
By the time he parks his car and makes it through the sliding glass doors of the hospital, Dick has worked himself up to the point where he has a tension headache and his left knee is screaming at him.  
  
He’s distracted and worried and he limps as fast as he can up to the reception desk where two nurses are quietly flipping through various charts.  And he almost misses it on his mission.  He almost misses the thin dark boy in the nearly completely vacant waiting room.  
  
Tim.  
  
Tim is right there in a navy blue zip-up hoodie and pair of jeans and his pale fingers are folded neatly in his lap.  And he’s just sitting there.  Staring ahead of himself.  Blue eyes not actually seeing anything.  
  
Dick can tell.  Dick can read the blank expression on Tim’s face.  In his eyes.  
  
“Tim,” Dick calls out softly, the yellow hospital lights makes Tim’s skin look dead, give him shadows that deepen the marks under his eyes.  And his nose is broken, needs to be reset.  There is dried blood on his neck and the collar of his shirt. “Timmy.”  He repeats, walks over to the boy with a slower, uneven gait. “Who did that to you?”  
  
Tim looks startled, he looks surprised to see Dick there. He looks.  Tim looks absolutely *empty* and it scares Dick so much.  
  
“Tim-”  
  
Tim shakes his head as if to clear it, “Dick?  What are you doing here?  Why aren’t you at the house?  Did you talk to Bruce yet?  You should def-”  
  
“Tim.  I’m,”  And what does he say?  He’s out of any sort of helpful knowledge.  “Bruce told me you might be here… How’s… is… Is Dana okay?”  He asks because Tim is just… sitting in a waiting room at nine o’clock at night.  With his hands folded in his lap and sad empty eyes.  
  
Those eyes glance away quickly, blink something… something clear and watery back.  “Jason’s back, Dick.”  
  
Jason?  Jay?  Little wing?  His Jason?  Jace-  
  
“Yes.  You should go and talk to Bruce… I’m not sure what or how or any of the facts but… he’s there, he’s real and…” Tim trails off.  “I know he’ll want to see you, Dick.”  
  
And he’s a half a second away from turning around, limping back out of the hospital and using his lights to make it to Bristol in fifteen minutes.   
  
But Tim is just sitting in a waiting room.  With his pale, scarred hands folded in his lap.  
  
“Well - he can wait a while.  How’s Dana, Tim?  You never answered my question.”  He sits in the the chair, it’s hard and plastic and uncomfortable and he’s been sitting all day.  But he sits next to Tim because the boy needs him.  
  
Tim’s eyes, pale and sparkly blue and rimmed in red, the flick up to his and then back down.  Back at his knotted fingers, the tops of his beat up Chuck Taylors.  The ugly institutional carpet.    
  
Tim sighs before he speaks.  
  
“Well.  I guess I’m not.  I’m not really her family, _legally_.  So I can’t see her right now.  Visiting hours ended a few hours ago.”  Tim unlaces his fingers from each other, bring his thumb up to his mouth and starts to pick the skin around the nail with his teeth.  
  
Watching it hurts more than his leg.  Watching all of Tim’s tells tumble out of him… it hurts Dick.  “Let me talk to the-”  
  
Tim yanks the finger out of his mouth, rips a sliver of skin off too quickly and now there’s blood dripping from the wound, “No!  Don’t.  They… they’re just doing their job.  Dana never adopted me formally.  It’s fine.  It’s fine.  It’s fine.”  Tim repeats.  In threes.  
  
Dick watches the boy start chewing on his thumb again, the skin and the nail this time.  Here the click of straight white teeth that grab the cartilage and sever.  Tim looks war torn.  “Tell me what I can do Tim.  Please.  Please.  Please tell me.”  Dick wants to take Tim’s hand, the one that’s in his mouth, being brutalized.  
  
Tim looks up and over at him, a lost little boy, and… Oh god.  
  
Dick remembers that.  Dick… fuck.    
  
Dick breaks out into chills.  Because he remembers that look.  That’s the look of… Tim’s been fired.  Because Jason is back.  And… Dick pieces together logical patterns, logical examples of what might have happened.  
  
Jason’s back, Bruce’s chosen Robin.  And Tim is at the hospital.  Waiting for permission to see the only other person alive who loved his father the way Tim loved him.  
  
Dick pushes out a breath.  It comes out shaky.  And he _wants_ to see Jason.  He wants to talk to Bruce.  
  
But more than that, he wants to make sure Tim is okay.  As okay as he can get.  
  
Calloused fingers reach out and encircle Tim’s bony wrist and Dick gently tugs the hand away from Tim’s vicious teeth.  
  
“You’re waiting here?”  Dick asks softly, implores Tim to look him in the eye when he holds Tim’s hand, weaves his own fingers through Tim’s shorter, thinner ones.  
  
Tim does look at him.  It hurts.  It’s hard to look at them like this.  It’s like staring into the sun.  But he watches as Tim nods.  
  
“Then I’ll wait with you.”  And he squeezes Tim’s hand and holds on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are awesome; thanks for the kudos! Next chapter is queued up for Monday. Have a great weekend!


	5. chapter five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to upload the last part. Oops. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, anyway.

It’s closer to two in the afternoon the next day, after lunch, after Dana’s two hour therapy session, that Tim is finally allowed access to her room.  
  
Jason is so lucky, Tim thinks, because Dick is such a great surrogate brother to have, always has been.  And the man sits with him until it’s light out.  Until the heavy weight of guilt that pulls down on Tim’s shoulders, weighs flat against his chest becomes to much for Tim to keep him here, with him.  It’s selfish, after all, because Dick has work the next day.  And it’s clear he’s in a lot of pain and his swollen knee is straining against the denim of his pants.  

He’s been sitting in the same plastic hospital chair that Tim has, but Tim isn’t rehabbing such a severe injury.    
Tim barely even feels the pull.  
  
Not when he’s keeping Dick from going to see Bruce and Jason.  That’s selfish and Tim thinks that if Dick keeps sitting here with him, occasionally squeezing his hand, or his arm, or his knee gently, reassuringly-   
  
Tim might never let him go again.  
  
So he argues and uses things like logic and reason and when that doesn’t work he tries pleading and giant ‘cartoon anime eyes’ - Dick’s description, not his.  
  
“Tim. I — okay.  But I’m going to call you tonight and you better answer, okay?  And we’re going to talk about this.  Okay?”  Dick’s eyes are transparent and cool and clear.  All of it laced with concern.  “Okay?” The man repeats when Tim just blinks at him.  
  
“Yeah.  Okay.”  Tim agrees.  He has his doubts that Dick will remember.  Not that Dick is especially careless, but.  He has so much going on in his life.  It’s understandable that certain things fall to the wayside.  
  
Tim himself… he did it with his Dad, with Dana.  With Stephanie.  
  
It’s all understandable.  
  
Just like it’s understandable when Dana doesn’t really talk to him when he is finally allowed to see her.  And Tim’s never been exactly chatty with anyone, let alone his step-mom, but for her, for himself even, he tries.  
  
“I tried to come last night, but they wouldn’t let me in.”  
  
“It’s okay, Tim.  I know that you’re a busy kid,”  Dana says airily, but she’s staring out of the window of her room and her nails that are cut shorter than she usually keeps them are spinning the yellow plastic medical bracelet on her narrow wrist.  
  
Her hand is cold when he grabs it, holds it gently like Dick did for him - Tim learns by example, observation and practical experience..  “I’m not that busy,” He’s not… He shouldn’t be anymore.  “I’ll do better.  My time just… it really freed up.”  
  
Dana doesn’t say anything - she just stares out of the window.  And it’s a cold and crisp Gotham sunlight.  Deceptively cold, for such a bright light.    
  
“I will,”  Tim repeats with conviction.  Because he understands how… now without anydistractions, how he let so many things slip through the cracks.  How inconsiderate he was.  What kind of son and step-son and family member he had been.  
  
And he wasn’t disregarding the important role he played as Robin, he would never discredit that title - it was precious.  As was Batman and Superman and the Teen Titans.  All of them were important.    
  
But Tim was careless.  And now he was paying the price.  
  
Now he knew how alone he actually was.  Now that it was absolute and obvious where he fell in the lives of those around him.  He had nothing anymore and really it was his own fault.  
  
He’d cut the strings of a lot of people, cut them to make room for people that… what?  That he worked with?  That he saved lives with?  
  
Tim reminds himself that it was important - but all he sees around him are broken strings dangling around him, weeping at his feet.  All these strings except Dana.  She’s not cut - she’s with in reach.  She’s all he has.  Her string is frayed and worn in areas, but she’s still there.    
  
So he waits with her silently.  He waits while she stares out of the window at the unfairly blue sky.  He waits with her while she picks at her lunch.  And then again while she picks at her dinner.   
  
He waits while the nurse places an IV of nutrients and fluids.    
  
Tim does this for another day - he waits with her, waits for her.  He waits until the nurse sends him home.  
  
The hotel next to the hospital is one that Bruce owns and he uses the credit card Bruce gave him ‘in case of an emergency’ to book a room.  It’s not like the man doesn’t know how to find him - so a credit card trail won’t really be of any consequence.  
  
Dick doesn’t call him that night and again, Tim is not surprised.  Because Dick forgot that Tim doesn’t have a phone with him and Tim didn’t remind him.  
  
He waits in the bathroom, sitting on the seat of the toilet while his shower heats up, hot and steamy, before he strips out of his dirty clothes, lets them pool around his ankles before he steps into the scalding hot water - avoiding the mirror and staring resolutely at the white tiles of the shower.  
  
It’s easier with the heat.  To resolutely not think about anything.    
  
Just the feel of the hot water pelting his back.  Stinging, near scorching of his skin and the destruction of cells.    
  
He stands there and doesn’t think about Robin.  And he doesn’t think about Bruce or Batman or anything.  It’s easy to push it down, actually.  It’s easier then he thinks it ought to be.  

He silences that voice in the back of his head, questioning Jason Todd and his sudden arrival.

It’s not his concern anymore.  
  
After Tim’s shower has turned his skin pink and red and the water starts to lose its bite, he steps out and changes into a spare pair of soft, worn, clean scrubs a nice nurse had lent him when they passed him a styrofoam cup of black coffee and a small bran muffin.  
  
It’s only 7:40pm, he should eat more, but he slides into the clean, starched sheets of the bed and puts himself to sleep in less than five minutes.  
  
The next day he does it again - He wakes up and walks back to the hospital.    
  
He waits for Dana’s visiting hours.  He waits for Dana to acknowledge him and understands when she doesn’t.  Tim feels like he’s waiting for Dana to magically get better.  To snap out of perfectly normal grief and depression and tell him what to do.    
  
He waits for her because she’s all he has and he needs to hold on to it.  
  
Tim does this for two more days.  Stopping for meals and showers; sleeping in the hotel next door.  Waiting for his last link to anything familiar acknowledges him.    
  
Suddenly, Dana’s cornflower blue eyes spark up - flash at him in a sudden moment of understanding.  And she’s…Oh.  She’s angry.  Her eyebrows have narrowed and gather in the center and and her jaw is clenched and she’s looking at Tim, studying him with a pointed look.  
  
“What are you doing, Tim?”  She asks him, her voice a little rough from lack of use, but still pointed and engaged.  
  
“What?  Dana, I -”  
  
“Don’t you have school?  And… and class.  And friends, Tim?  What are you just… living here now?”  
  
“Dana, I -”  
  
“Tim, you can’t just wait for me to get better, okay?  It’s not going to magically happen with you staring at me.  This isn’t what your dad would have wanted for you.  This isn’t what I want for you.  This - Tim, I’m the grownup here and you don’t have to take care of me,”  She pauses before continuing looking at Tim with concern, “-I have doctors to help me, Tim.”  
  
Shivers and goosebumps rush over Tim’s skin, under the soft fleece of the old hospital sweatshirt a nurse had given him.  His eyes start to burn before he can stop it, his body’s parasympathetic responses are treacherous  _thieves_.  
  
“Tim… I.”  Dana is looking at him, he can feel her eyes.  “My sister lives in Reno and she’s already agreed that you should stay with her for a little while.”  
  
Dana keeps talking, but Tim can’t hear it over the roaring in his head and he can’t see her lips move because he presses his face into the palms of his hands hard.  The heels of his hands press hard into his mouth, but the callouses there and the pressure - they do nothing to stop the sounds that rip from Tim’s throat.  
  
High, keening things that, even muffled cause his shoulders to shake with labored breathes that wrecked his frame.  He told himself to stop.  Tim screamed at himself to stop.  But something was blocking his ability to breath in oxygen, to take full breaths of air.    
  
There is nothing - if Dana doesn’t want him anymore, there is nothing.  Tim Drake is irrelevant.  He’s irrelevant and he has nothing.  He’s not any one’s son.  He’s not any one’s best friend.  He’s not any one’s Robin.  
  
And Dana was it.  She was the last one.  And she doesn’t want him anymore.    
  
Maybe she never did.  Maybe she only ever spoke to him, only ever tried to humor him because of his dad.    
  
And Bruce never really wanted Tim.  He had basically just volunteered himself for the job of Robin, Bruce never really wanted him - told him that from the get-go.  And Tim can understand that, just because he wasn’t chose, doesn’t mean he wasn’t useful eventually.  Doesn’t mean that he was something less, right?  
  
And now Bruce had Jason back, so even if Tim was useful for a time, he isn’t needed anymore.  
  
Stephanie was the only person to really ever choose him.  To ever want just him and she’s gone, just like everyone else - everything else.   
  
And Dana is all he has.  
  
It’s easy to think all of these things, every doubt pushes against hairline fractures in his mind.  Puts stress on the poorly patched structure.  
  
 _But if Dana doesn’t want him, if she wants to send him away, then what will he do?_  
  
Sharp pressure and pain builds in his head, in his eye sockets as he presses the heels of his palms in harder.  He tries to keep his mouth shut and breath silently through his nose, but it doesn’t work and labored breaths and distressed sounds are still escaping.  
  
Because he can’t hold it together.  And why should he?  He has nothing.  Nobody to please now - no one to keep it together for.  There’s nothing for him to do.  Everything is cold and empty, except where it’s hot, sore, and bleeding.    
  
Tim thinks he’s in hell.  He think that he must have done something horrible to deserve this.   
  
Dana might be trying to say something to him, and he felt light, nothing-touches on his shoulder on his knee, on the cotton of his sweatshirt, but all he hears is roaring in his ears and the pounding in his head.  The sharp pains from his eyes.  Tim hears the sounds he makes, like an animal being slaughtered - a stuck pig.  
  
He feels like he’ll never stop, the crying, the sobbing.  Wet face and snot and tears and saliva.  He’s disgusting, he feels gross… and it feels like he’s never going to be able to stop.  
  
It’s a sharp pinch under his arm, a nerve strike that Tim’s body is uncomfortably familiar with, and his arms drop from his face, and the left side of his body goes numb and slack, like a bag of flour.    
  
Through watery, blurred eyes, Tim can see Dick.  Standing in front of Tim, between him and Dana, who is staring at him like… well.  Like he just publicly, messily fell apart in front of her.  He can feel the wet tears cooling on his face.  And he’s still panting and gasping for air while he tries to figure out just when Dick got there.  
  
Tim knows that they are all staring at each other like everything they’ve ever seen, heard and known is a lie.  Like they have no idea what to do, where to start.  Like Tim is a puzzle that isn’t solvable.  
  
There is still no feeling in his left side and there won’t be for a while, but he can see that Dick places a hand on his shoulder and even though he’s not hearing Dick, he’s not hearing anything but the sounds that are coming out of his own mouth, but he watches Dick’s mouth - read his lips, ‘Wait outside.  Wait for me, Tim.’  And the man pushes him gently out of the room.  
  
The painted cinder-blocks are cool on his back, as he leans against the wall and slides down until his eyes are level with his chin.   
  
And he waits for… however long Dick takes.  
  
He waits and watches as pastel colored nurses walk through the halls and doctor’s in white coats enter in and out of patient rooms.  He watches them work, diligently and industriously.  
  
Dick comes out, it couldn’t have been too long, but there are no windows in this hallway, just flickering halogen lights.  But Dick comes out of Dana’s room and he looks serious.  There are lines at the corners of his eyes that weren’t there before.    
  
“She doesn’t want me either.”  Tim hears his voice creak from disuse.  From the tears and cries.  “She wants me to move to-”  
  
But he can’t finish that sentence because Dick grabs his arm and levers him up against the man’s body.  His face is mashed against the material on his shoulder and Dick’s strong arms are tight around him.  And - oh.  Tim smells the fabric softener that Alfred favors.    
  
Tim has to breath in a deep shuttering breath against the canvas, because it smells good and he wants to always remember it.  He’s going to _miss_ Alfred.    
  
“Come on, we’re going home.”  Dick says after a minute, uncurls his arms from Tim’s body.  Tim wants to sob at the lack of contact, but Dick takes his hand, twines narrow and calloused fingers through his own and pulls him away from Dana’s room and towards the exit of the hospital.  
  
Tim hears a seam inside himself rip, because he wants to stay with Dana.  Everything is telling him that he needs to stay with her, make sure she gets better.  And even though she doesn’t want him there, there is still something inside of Tim that is screaming that she’s the only one left.  The only thing left.  
  
But the other side is Dick, who isn’t looking at him, but his hand is warm in Tim’s clammy one and he smells so good.  And Tim has been following Dick since he was three years old.  And just holding the man’s hand has him feeling steadier.  And when they step outside into the bright, cold sunlight, Dick begins to speak.  
  
“Dana is sick, Tim.  And she wants to get better.  She does.  For herself.  For you.  She wants to get better and she does want you.  But, Tim, if you’re there, waiting for her… just waiting above her for her to suddenly be okay for you.  Tim.”  Dick pauses and they have reached Dick’s car.  Not his bike.  “Tim.  You should see your face, kid.  You have to give her time and you can’t be there because you look as sad as you absolutely should, Tim.”  
  
Pressure and tears well up behind Tim’s eyes as he gets in the passenger seat, slams the door shut and puts his face in his hands.  
  
“Timmy.”  Dick is in the driver seat now.  He fiddles with the keys in his lap and the sun is so bright.   
  
It’s so bright.  
  
“Timmy, it’s going to be okay.  It’s going to be okay.”  
  
The engine of the car purrs under his feet as it turns over and Dick puts the car in drive, signals out of the parking lot.  “She wants me to go live with her sister in Reno, Dick.  I don’t know -”  Tim trails off.  He can’t look up because it’s too bright outside, he keeps his face in his hands.  “I don’t know what to do anymore.”  
  
Dick is making his way through Gotham mid-day traffic with ease.  Tim can hear the signals on the dashboard and the vents.  He can hear the slide of skin on the steering wheel before Dick answers, “You don’t have to do anything, Tim.  Nothing.  You’re going to live with me.  You’re going to do nothing because that’s what you need to do.  Tim, I -  
  
“You lost a lot of people, Tim.  You lost.  You lost a lot.  No one expects you to do anything.  You’re going to go to school.  And you’re going to be… you’re going to try and be a kid your age.  And I’ll be with you.”  
  
“Why aren’t you with Bruce and Juh-Jason, Dick?” 

“Bruce and Jason have each other.  They always have.”  
  
And that causes something in Tim’s chest to freeze and he removes his hands from his eyes in order to wrap his arms around his chest, in order to move his hands to his shoulders and squeeze.    
  
Bruce and Jason have each other.  And Tim has -  
  
“And you have me.  You need me.  And I need you, Tim.  I do.  And if you still.  And we can talk about it later, much later, about how Nightwing might need a Flamebird.”  
  
-fin


End file.
